Telephone users desire to customize the information (e.g., music) that they receive while they are on hold. To permit such customization, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/321,305, filed on Dec. 29, 2005, discloses that a telephone may receive from a telephone switch customized on-hold information uploaded by the user, or that the telephone may have an internal source of on-hold information, or that the telephone may have a mechanism for playing on-hold information received via radio-frequency waves, the Internet, or even another telephone.
Some telephones have a docking station for connecting a portable device, such as a personal hand-held assistant (PHA), to the telephone for purposes of synchronizing data contents of the telephone and the portable device. For example, the Mitel 5230 IP phone offers a docking station for synchronizing a Compaq iPAQ device with the phone, thereby allowing association of contact data, etc., stored in the iPAQ device with the phone. It also offers the users the ability to access Windows-CE operating system-based desktop applications such as portable voice mail and dial by address book.